Test, learn, iterate

Ask the right questions

You’re probably approaching your YouTube campaign with some idea of which metrics and milestones are a priority. Your key post-campaign metrics may include:

The video’s length or cost to produce.

The total number of views and impressions.

Percent of viewers who made it to milestones points of the video (such as 25 or 50 percent watched).

View-through rates and click-through rates.

Average watch times.

Earned views.

When comparing pieces of creative, start by looking at the audience retention rate. This will almost always identify the best-performing video.

One health-food brand learned that they were over-performing — exceeding all projected targets — with an unexpected demographic. They responded by re-targeting that video’s distribution so that more budget went to placing the video in front of this audience, and with greater frequency.

After determining whether your video is capturing viewer attention -- which moments, and why — examine your number of earned views and your click-through rate. On YouTube, earned views are the additional views generated as the result of a paid view. And click-through rate is the number of clicks on the video ad or the accompanying display ad compared to the total number of impressions.

Asking the right questions as a campaign winds down can take the guesswork out of future approaches. This is the best time to query your initial goals, assumptions, and projections, and capture the true scope of what you’ve accomplished.

Some important questions to ask at the end of any campaign are:

Are views coming from your target demographic? Are these views coming from a geographic region that makes sense from your business?

If audiences that you didn’t anticipate attention from are responding to your content, why might that be? Is that something you want to capitalize on?

What characteristics, if any, do your organically earned views share?

How many times has this video been shared?

Has this content won (or lost) any subscribers for your channel?

What does the click-through-rate tell you? Did you hit your projected goals for CTR?

Whether your campaign exceeded all or didn't quite meet your expectations, consider how you can use these results to improve your future campaign.

Plan for next time

Now that you’ve identified how and where you want to improve on the campaign that just wrapped up, let’s look at a few fixes that other brands and creators have successfully implemented to resolve common issues — all without touching your creative.

To target viewers with greater precision next time:

Observation

Organic action

Paid action

Too few views

Repost to your/your partner’s social footprint.

Use video (or trailer) as a Trueview ad to invite views.

Views outside target locations

Update metadata to include more country references.

Target advertising to users in specific locations.

Views outside target demo

Encourage creators with same affinity to share your video.

Target advertising to users from specific demo or affinity.

High % of views from repeat viewers

Use Fan Finder to seek new viewers.

Create remarketing lists from channel visits and views, and negatively target with ads.

To increase engagement next time:

Observation

Organic action

Paid action

Fast drop in retention

If the drop off is at the beginning of the video, adjust the hook of your video.

Promote a trailer of content to invite more interested viewers.

Low brand awareness/attribution

Increase brand prominence in metadata (esp. titles).

If the drop off is at the end of the video, add a call to action with your end cards. Use companion banners as extra brand signal.

Actions below expectations(e.g. shares, subs, clicks)

If the drop off is at the beginning of the video, remove your branding.

Always consider what you want this video to accomplish before production gets greenlit. As you approach the end of your creative development lifecycle, think about ways to make your YouTube campaign even more powerful by leveraging Google’s tools for brands to capture the most actionable data.

Consider applying your findings from online creative tests to other media, as well as online video campaigns.